Let Them Eat Cake
by The Lady Avaritia
Summary: Vanity is the loveliest sin, and the most cruel mistress.


**Title:** Let Them Eat Cake

**Rating: T**  
><strong>Spoilers: G<strong>eneral

**Characters**: Sakura and Ino; Ino-centric  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Vanity. It's such a lovely word. It rolls off one's tongue and leaves a bittersweet aftertaste. Vanity. It's such an important word. It marks one's life, one's entire conception of the word.

**Disclaimer: **disclaimed

**Author Note: **This piece is meant as no offense to anyone. I merely wanted to show the point of view of those people (girls) who devote infinite amounts of time and money to their looks. Others tend to mock such people for their shallowness, but they don't realize that such an obsession with one's looks has more to do with psychology that anything else, and is often a subconscious reaction to some trauma, using the physical looks as a shield against the world.

**Author: **_Lady Avaritia_

Vanity. It's such a lovely word. It rolls off one's tongue and leaves a bittersweet aftertaste. Vanity. It's such an important word. It marks one's life, one's entire conception of the world.

Vanity is a sin. But what is sin? It's merely the most graceful of all compliments. It's something lovely. Like a silk shawl to wrap around one's shoulders because it complements one's eyes. Sin is the highest, most exquisite form of perfection. And vanity is the highest, most exquisite form of sin.

_How can you be so vain?_ People ask as if it's a bad thing. How can you not be vain? Only the shallow people can not understand the importance of vanity. It is the very essence of a human being. People were born vain. Vanity is that invisible force which moves you and makes you wish to be better, stronger, more beautiful, more cunning, more… just more, for the sake of your own perfection, so that you can look everyday in the mirror and think 'Why, what lovely creature…I am.'

Ino understood that. She had long ago grasped the sheer importance of loveliness, which can only be realized through vanity. She put insane, inhuman efforts in perfection. She starved herself to stay thin, she got up at four a.m. to have time to apply her make-up and brush her hair, one hundred times exactly. She put her all in that one single masterpiece that every artist would be proud to call his – herself. And she dreaded that one day when her hair would lose its silver glow and her blue eyes would grow dull. It was perfection's only flaw – it was never lasting. But she consoled herself with the certain knowledge that people like her, shinobi, that is, die too young to ever know anything but youth and beauty. So she continued to painfully deny herself any gastronomic pleasure, and to lose sleep over perfectly matched outfits and painfully precise make-up. And sometimes, when she was sure no one watched her, she crept in her home's kitchen, took out a piece of home-made cake from the fridge and carefully…smelled it. That was it. A sniff of chocolate or strawberry, or whatever was in the cake. And then she would dream of that same cake for nights afterwards.

Ino's life was one of absolute strive for pure physical perfection. She had never encountered an issue that she couldn't solve with a flip of blond hair and a short trip to the shopping area where she'd shoplift something small and then go home. There were never poisonous words that could make her cry and ruin her make up. There was never anything hurtful enough to make her do anything but twist her lips in a mocking smile.

There was never anything… except a handsome raven boy named Sasuke. He had turned in her main motivation for perfection. It was the image of his face that pulled her through nights when the temptation to take just a _bite_ of cake was almost too strong.

And then he left. Just like that he disappeared from her life. And she didn't know what to do. It was the first time she ever encountered a problem that couldn't be solved with shopping. For the first time there was something that couldn't make her smile despite how painful it was. For Ino always laughed at pain. Her own as well as others'. So when she found out she went as quickly as possible, but without running, for ladies never run, especially in ten inch heels, to the ladies' room. There in front of the big mirrors she took out her make-up bag and frantically dug for her eyeliner.

Where was it? Where was the damn thing?

'Ino,' she heard Chouji's voice from behind the door. Aha! Target-located. She took it out and unscrewed the tap with trembling fingers. They didn't understand. None of them understood. It was so important to look good. Couldn't they see that only the beautiful people were happy? She pressed the sharp tip of the kohi pencil against her eyelid and curved a line. Sakura burst in. Ino felt anger. Stupid, stupid Sakura. We could all just leave our hair hang there and look normal. And we could all just skip morning make-up. And we cold all just dress in whatever we saw first. Couldn't she realize that beauty was of the utmost importance?

-SNAP-

The eyeliner broke. She'd been pressing it so hard against her eyelid. She felt a warm trickle of blood from where it had scratched her. Alright, okay. Now she could cry. It was natural to cry when you just almost stab your eye. It wouldn't look suspicious. But it would ruin her make up. No. If she leaned so that her face was vertical to the floor, the tears would fall down and not slide down her checks and her make-up would be preserved.

'Ino,' Sakura whispered. There was something in her voice that sounded off.

'Ino,' she repeated more firmly. 'Let's go to your home, ne? And we'll eat cake there. It will make you feel better.'

'I don't eat…cake. I'm on a diet.'

'Alright. Then I'll eat cake.' Sakura said. 'And then we'll go to Miss Selfish and I'll treat you to any piece of jewelry you like.'

They never made the trip to Miss Selfish. Once they entered Ino's kitchen, she practically threw herself at the cake and in the short time span of five minutes proceeded to destroy it with viciousness that would make even Chouji cower in fear somewhere. And then she sobbed hysterically in Sakura's unfashionable and thoroughly ugly dress. If her suffered beauty couldn't make Sasuke-kun stay…then…then what's the point of perfection? That day for the first and last time in a longtime, Ino ate five whole chocolate cakes and just around the sixth thought of offering Sakura some.

Vanity. It's such a lovely word. It rolls off one's tongue and leaves a bittersweet aftertaste. Vanity. It's such an important word. It marks one's life, one's entire conception of the word.


End file.
